Epic Considering Always Online For Fortnite [Updated]

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Update: Epic’s issued a statement clarifying its meaning, noting that – while nothing’s off the table – it hasn’t entered serious talks about how it’ll implement online play at this point. Here’s the official word, in full: “We’re not talking about our plans at this time, mainly because that plan doesn’t exist yet. Fortnite is an iterative, living project and many things are still being decided prior to its release in 2013.”

Original article: Let’s start with some good news, shall we? First off, Fortnite’s looking quite nice and – based on an interview I just wrapped with producer Tanya Jessen (which you’ll see all of tomorrow) – the Unreal-Engine-4-powered survivor is, by and large, taking full advantage of every tool at PC gaming’s disposal. In other words, expect a constant flow of new content, some form of mod support, and impressively open-ended, procedurally generated worlds. It’s not all uncharacteristically colorful cartoon roses, however. At this stage, Jessen told me, a constant Internet connection requirement ala Diablo is still a possibility. She assured, however, that it’d be used first and foremost to improve the game – not as a last line of defense against piracy’s nighttime pillages.

“That’s something we don’t know yet,” Jessen explained to RPS. “It’s gonna be really dependent on gameplay, and it’s also dependent on platform – the method of getting updates and stuff like that. So I can’t say for sure today one way or another [whether or not we’re going to use it].”

She added, however, that Fortnite is – above all else – being designed with multiplayer at the forefront, so whatever goes with that territory is fair game.

“Fortnite is a game that’s being developed as a co-op experience primarily,” she said. “That’s our number one focus. This is a game you’re gonna want to play with your friends, and it’s most fun with your friends. So whatever we decide to do there is gonna be more relevant to the most fun experience you can have with your friends [than it is to piracy]. But I can’t nail that down today.”

That said, constant connection or not, the aim isn’t to turn single-player into a stark reminder of the fact that you’re single-tear-sobbingly alone. Epic wrote quite a few chapters in the Big Book O’ Co-Op with Gears of War, though, so it – probably better than most – understands that forcing multiplayer where it doesn’t belong can sink an entire game.

“Single-player’s absolutely gonna be super fun,” Jessen enthused. “But, like I said, we’re building it to be a co-op experience. But co-op won’t ever be required in any shape or form. In particular, we’ve got this personality we call ‘the lone wolf’ – like, the kind of person who maybe likes to jump in and play with their friends, but not necessarily all of the time, or maybe they even like to play primarily by themselves. So we are definitely making sure that Fortnite will be super fun for that type of person too.”

“It’s just that, if you don’t design for co-op from the very beginning and make it a pillar of your project, then the game systems don’t tend to feel as solid in the co-op experience. So that’s how we’re developing the game from the outset.”

At this point, then, it’s simply a matter of waiting for Fortnite to truly take shape. Still though, it is a bit worrisome. Diablo III’s connection hiccups are well-documented – as is the point where they turned out to not be hiccups at all, but instead a complication–spewing volcano of mounting issues that sprouted from the very depths of hell itself, largely for an auction house that sort of defeats the purpose of the entire game.

Elsewhere, meanwhile, there’s at least some hope – slight though it might be. SimCity‘s ambitious online features at least sound like they could justify the cost of entry, and a disconnect won’t grind your game to a screeching halt. So that’s something, at least. But even then, EA has been known to send servers to the great farm in the sky long before their time, so it could all be for naught the second, say, a sequel comes out. (And is still no bloody good for anyone wanting to play the game without a connection – John)

Regardless, more and more major developers are pegging this as the way of the future, and I’m desperately hoping that no-strings-attached single-player eventually re-emerges from the fray in one piece. But, right now – with everyone still struggling to adapt and figure out what actually works – I see very few situations where this doesn’t get worse before it gets better.

Yep, always on (or even just enforced phone home every execution to allow offline play, which is the next step down in draconian DRM that turns a purchase into a rental with crappy limitations on the solo play – yep, I want SimCity but I’ll have to play one of the hundreds of games I own without this restriction if they don’t change course on that policy before release) is over the line for me. I might like the sound of your game, but I’m sorry I can’t reward your work with some of this lovely money stuff in case you get the idea that it’s ok to use this form of DRM.

I gave Diablo the benefit of the doubt and it fucked me. 3 or 4 times I lost connection for no reason and had to replay 10 or even 20-minute stretches of my single player game. Always-on connectivity is now on my verboten list just like games with limited activation DRM.

Yeah, don’t bother with this game. Have to send a developers that “always on” DRM does not equal solo play. If I can’t play the damn game solo when I bloody well please where I please then the company is just renting the game to me not selling it.

I just have so many other games to choose from, I can afford to ignore this one due to always on DRM. Besides, what use is a game if I can’t play it while I’m stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean for six weeks and terribly bored?

All of you who care about this game but won’t buy because of DRM: Please, please, write a short note to Epic on the day of release mentioning this decision. Otherwise we’ll just get the same old piracy whining and “PC is dead, told you so”.

Surely it would be better to do so now, in the hope that they’ll see the sense in not using AODRM at all, before it is too late. Once it hits the shelves with AODRM it is dead to me, even if they remove it later. I have enough games to play that don’t include this nonsense.

Passed on Diablo III due to AODRM. My friends have already played it as much as they care to and their disinterest keeps me from thinking I’m missing out. In fact, the same thing happened with StarCraft 2. Come to think of it, personally I haven’t played a Blizzard game since WoW–none of the expansions…Blizzard used to make must play games in my book.

Anyway, looks like Fort Nite will fall into the same category of “Oh well, what else to play.” It’s not like I don’t have a backlog generated by consecutive Steam sales.

In the hope that developers note the response to this announcement, and why wouldn’t they read one of the world’s biggest gaming blogs, I’m adding my voice to this. Always-on DRM is highly likely to prevent me buying this game.

This is because Diablo still sold incredibly well and because despite the vocal complains about allways-on, almost nobody asked for a refund about the problems.
So:
Blizzards test allways-on.
Blizzard screw it up.
Blizzard get away with it.
Everyone knows Blizzard are the best.
Everyone wants allways-on.

We may have _perceived_ it different, but they “succeeded” with their online DRM just as much as Blizzard/Activision.
Thankfully, despite being able to sell it, they eventually had enough about the backlash, but the main dilemma is that if you pay these people well, you really have only hope left to rely on, because the only fucking leverage you had as a consumer, you gave away to them when you financed them and their DRM product.

Actual figures are tough to come by.
Ironically enough, we’re faced with a similiar problem arguing around the DRM: if the PC sales are not so super-duper, it may simply be because out of 10 million people 8 already bought it for their console, because well fuck giving the PC a simultaneous release date -> people buy it as soon as possible, and only for console, despite also having a PC or of the camp of herpderp PC too old and complicated -> numbers could be because of that and not of DRM.

But FUD and spin don’t work with facts anyhow. What matters is perception.
This is what we got to hear from Ubi:
” Ubisoft representative told PC Gamer the company has seen ”a clear reduction in piracy of our titles which required a persistent online connection, and from that point of view the requirement is a success.””

Which is funny, because unlike D3, all of the titles were cracked and put online and torrented to buttfucksville regardless, even if it took a while. But here, too, maybe there is something to the initial sales spike / first weeks being crucial argument.
If they only need to put off pirates for some weeks for sales to “work” – supposedly – and that was achieved, then its a success.

Obviously the long-term pissing off of paying customers runs parallel to that. And if it really is only the first few weeks, why not make everything DRM free after 3 months?
Or whatever.
None of their logic ever really works completely, I’ve found, so quite honestly I find it best to just say pro-DRM is idiotic, in any way, shape or form, period.

It’s quite funny how the paying customers always get screwed by server downtimes when cynics like me put on their peglegs and have no problem. Always-online failed miserably as fair as the end user is concerned imo.

Except of course, quite a lot of people asked for a refund, Blizzard were threatened with legal action, and they irreparably damaged their brand. Just see them try it again and have the same sales, I think not.

Epic talking about doing the same thing when the Diablo 3 DRM disaster is still fresh in everyone’s minds is tantamount to commercial suicide. It’s stupid, dense, and shows a huge lack of awareness, and they can get knotted.

You’re completely correct, they don’t want you to buy their games. They want a gullible consumer who makes stupid impulse buys without restraint to keep up with the Joneses. They don’t want to have customers who have the ability to think critically about what they purchase.

“they don’t want you to buy their games” – I’m starting to wonder if this is actually correct.

Kind of self sabotage so they don’t seem like the bad guys when they shun the PC when the next console generation comes out. “We tried to give you want you wanted as gamers with Fortnite and no one bought it, that’s why we’ve gone back to putting all our effort into the console market.”.

I certainly don’t mean that to sound condiscending to console gamers, I simply mean more directed to a closed platform with more control. Rather than admit something like always on DRM was at fault, they can instead blame the gamers for their lack of interest or pirates (which they’ll likely still do if it doesn’t meet their sales expectations, always on DRM or no, hehe).

What? The Call of Duty crowd likes being forced through on-rails “cinematic” experiences. Nothing in Skyrim forces you anywhere, and it’s hardly on-rails. The only thing they have in common is “cinematic.”

well that’s because, except for the first day or so, Diablo 3’s issues concerning its always online connectivity have been greatly exaggerated by this site and many others. The truth is the majority of players don’t have any issues with connectivity but certain gaming sites ignore that in order to push an agenda. Don’t get me wrong i am not a big fan of always online and if given a choice i would rather do without it. but that’s the truth whether you like it or not. It has nothing to do with consumers being stupid as you guys like try and point out, its just not as big of a deal as people make of it.

This is not about consumers being stupid, this is about most consumers not caring regardless. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if more than half of the people getting the game didn’t even know about the always online prior to getting the game.

And that’s the thing, aside from the vocal minority, most people don’t care about the industry politics behind most games. Ironically, from my experience, the same people that accept always online unquestionably are the same people who pirate most of their games.

Do you know how much it boggled my mind hearing a friend of mine saying that he bought Diablo 3 but pirated Bastion?

After being subjected to cheaters, hackers, and player killers in the previous Diablos I was a huge proponent of the always-online requirement. In the end D3’s DRM disappointed me in every way possible. I was their biggest defender and because of Blizzard’s negligence and ineptitude I am completely on the other side. Always-on DRM is a dealbreaker for me now.

One, as in a single, occurence of my singleplayer hardcore char dying or a save/progress being lost due to lag or disconnect would be enough to simply consider the game not worth bothering with and dysfunctional. And I know 4 people who bought this POS and they all suffered some kind of malaise with it.

Whether or not its 50 times a day or once in 4 weeks, having a singleplayer character and your progress die because of an unecessary DRM feature should never, ever happen.
Once is one too many times.

” Don’t get me wrong i am not a big fan of always online and if given a choice i would rather do without it. ”
Well the argument is, you where given the choice and you chose to support Always Online DRM.

Simply put, I will never buy any game which requires a permanent internet connection even when playing solo. I’ve not bought any of the Ubisoft games that required it, I haven’t bought Diablo 3, and I won’t buy this if it uses it. If it means I miss out on some great games, that’s annoying, but not the end of the world.

It’s all for the customer, of course. Always-on means that the brain-dead target market won’t have to worry about complicated things like patching their game (or using that weird ‘Steam’ thing to do it for them). It also means that…er…experience. It means a better experience? For the customer?

…something like that. Perhaps the day I understand what possible advantage there could be in always-on DRM for customers, will be the day that the publishers admit that it’s solely about convincing investors that they will “save sales” from piracy.

I likely wasn’t going to buy this anyways as I don’t want to give CliffyB money, I don’t like the art style and I don’t enjoy many multiplayer games, but if they do implement always online DRM then they’ve made sure I wont buy it.

Whether the game is good or bad, if you finance always-online DRM, you are part of the problem, period.
There’s no wiggling room, just you individual weighing of you really, really “need it” bad enough to put up with something you’d normally not agree with.
That still makes it something you find wrong; you’re just basically saying just pay me enough to dump my values.

Sadly, RPS has fallen into the prejudice trap. I wonder why you don’t rail against Left 4 Dead. After all, that game requires you to be online to play it online!

LAN? Yeah, tons of extra work to develop so three people can use it. Move with the time, guys. I’ve not done LAN in a decade, since my internet is fast enough to save me moving a heavy gaming rig across the country.

I can play L4D on my own. That’s a pretty big difference. I don’t need to be online. I only need to be online to play online. Though Steams obnoxious offline mode might make that an issue. Seriously Valve, fix that shit already.

You mean L4D, the games with offline singleplayer mode? I don’t think that’s really comparable. The LAN mode is annoyingly hard to enable but I guess they really want everyone to play multiplayer in a connected stats-tracking way. Forcing me to be online for multiplayer is slightly annoying, making it so the exe does nothing (so no solo play or anything) if I’m not online when I want to launch the game is unacceptable.

The Diablo series is a single player ARPG with an option to play MP with your friends via LAN or online(but face-to-face social interactions were then deemed to be too social, human by the Diablo makers for 3, so no LAN anymore, and because fuck you that’s why no more offline SP).

I agree with Kdansky here. The ONLY reason people got so pissed off about Diablo III being online-only is because Diablo II had offline play. If the Diablo franchise had been an online game from the start no one would be complaining.

You don’t see people complaining about having to log in to play games like LoL (which is not an MMO but still requires you to play online, and you can play by yourself with bots so it’s “single player”).

Diablo “survived” because even if the game had an offline single player mode, a lot of players would never play it. And some of the people who would’ve played it at least somewhat are the (weird to me) kinds of people who create a character on another MMO server when the server with all their characters is down for an hour. Some of the backlash to the Diablo 3 online requirement isn’t really because it required you to be online, but because that limitation wasn’t in the other games in the series.

Then you look at a game like Assassin’s Creed or Fortnite and what’s the point? The new SimCity is at least giving you a reason to be online, but it’s yet to be seen if the online components have anything near the impact of the Diablo online features.

RPS, when a company is giving the exact same excuses for their always on DRM as Diablo 3 “It is good for multiplayer” and “It will enhance the game somehow” then it may well be worth calling the company on the similarities.

That’s a shame, I’m definitely less interested in this game now as well. Not because of the stupid always-on DRM, but because I don’t get much time to play multi-player games any more and games which focus on that are rarely as fun in single-player!

Well, it’s not as if I was going to preorder that thing based on a few screenshots. If it turns out AODRM is indeed in, I’m out. No game is worth going through another Error 37 odyssey.

Funny thing, the recent downtime of Ubi’s servers saw me play Anno 2070 in OFFLINE mode. If Ubi can learn it’s lesson (albeit not as good as I’d like them to) everyone can and there’s no excuse for not doing so..

Unless a game is fully and completely dedicated to multiplayer an internet connection should never be a requirement. You might miss out on certain features by not being connected, but the option to play offline should be there. Dark Souls is a good example of this; many of its interesting features rely on you being online but should you be disconnected, whether through choice or circumstance, you can still play the game. It doesn’t lock you out because you’re not getting the full experience.

Strong points Snidesworth – if you’re going to feature some sort of always on requirement, at least have respect for your customers.

If there is some underlying form of persistance between play sessions, I can understand wanting to have an always online requirement – but above all else, there should never be any enforced online requirement for singleplayer.

It just isn’t working, its putting people off the games, its causing major problems for legit customers and it seems its pushing people to look for ways to circumvent the situation or simply avoid the situation alltogether.

I think i need to start a blog to start a decent communication between devs and customers with reference to F2P, Always On Multiplayer, Monthly Subscriptions, online passes etc…

The games industry is in major flux at the moment and however much the consumer thinks ‘Piracy isn’t a problem’ or ‘2nd hand sales don’t hurt the developers’, they are a huge problem and they cause a huge loss in revenue.

It’s only sensible that developers think of new ways to sell, distribute and protect games, but i agree at the moment we aren’t doing a great job of making it painless for the consumer.

If little changes then I predict that console story driven single player games will die out as well as all big budget single player (Not online) PC games, both are far too susceptible to both forms of revenue hurting practices.

What’s the solution? I don’t know…. F2P is mooted a lot (even that has a permanent connection to the servers though), but everyone i know hates it, although i believe that’s partly due to the way it’s been implemented so far.

It seems to me this is the area of games development that needs the biggest innovation rather than the games themselves.

I think Free to Play is becoming more acceptable as time goes by, there are certainly games out there that have started to get things right in that payment method (League of Legends is always heralded as the leader of the pack here, but Tribes Ascend and Blacklight Retribution seem rather accepted as well), with the recent EU court ruling about being able to resell digital games – I see developers looking even more into offering games as a service rather than a product (although that certainly has its own share of issues).

There are some pretty big players coming up too with the likes of Planetside 2 and Hawken – if they nail it, I think we’ll see many more people embrace it rather than be concerned over issues of pay to win or their always on requirement (although they have the benefit of being strong multiplayer games).

As for singleplayer games…with the emergance of episodic games, I’m sure someone could be clever enough to merge that with free to play, providing a steady stream of content more akin to subscribing than buying a one off product.

Yes. PC gamers are all pirates, and nothing can sell anymore. And SP is dead.

Except for when kickstarters of promising SP games without DRM (ohnoes, copies) get 3-4 times overfunded.
Or Notch/Team meat makes millions on a game concept that you couldn’t have gotten past the front office in a common publisher.

If the “old industry” were to die out completely and all of game development had to become DRM free, kickstarter pitched, publically voted on stuff, it wouldn’t be half as bad as the half-assed console ports, sequels of sequels of sequels, DRM infested crap we have as run of the mill now.

So what I mean to say is “Piracy is killing/might kill the SP” is bullshit, and has been bullshit since it was brought up in what, the late 80s? already.

Kickstarter projects and games that don’t mess around with attempts to control their customers are certainly proof that there is a huge audiance out there that is screaming “We WANT to give you our money for this awesome game and because you’re not trying to screw us over, we’re going to!”

I’m certainly in no possition to say if there is more proffit to be made by trying to limit pirates or by embracing your customers loyalty however, but the latter fosters community (potentually increasing your loyalty based customers for any future release) and certainly seems like a better place to be for all involved.

One company I’m really keeping an eye on going forward is Crytek. Being very vocal about how many people have pirated their games in the past, I’m curious to see if there attempt to breach the free to play market shows similar proffits (showing its more a lack of interest in their games or simply people testing their rigs power output rather than people actively pirating just because they can).

Let’s take Mass Effect on the consoles as an example. Great game, sold a couple of million, was played by 5 million. that means out of everyone that played it 2/5 of the purchase price made it back to the developer. People say ‘Well, if it was a GREAT game, people wouldn’t have traded it in.’ Yes they would, lots of people when they finish a game, trade it in, i’m one of them, i don’t want to play the same story again. Multiplayer games don’t have that problem as much as they have much greater longevity and people play the same content over and over again.

Actually i would say that multiplayer games have a worse issue with trade ins, because of a snowball effect of people leaving the multiplayer.

If its not engaging it will be traded in quicker (stories tend to take time to complete), this causes a reduction in the ammount of people playing multi, so more people leave, only the hardcore stay and they are also likely to be the type of people that put others off playing (think lol community sort of things, verbal abuse, constant cries of noob and refusal to teach)

Then it gets even worse.

The ones you are thinkign off (the cods etc) still get traded in in big numbers, but also sold again in big numbers, it not jsut SP’s that suffer.

Why is trade in a problem all of a sudden? Piracy and trade-in have been part of the industry for thirty years. When creating a product you budget based on the current situation. You don’t budget for a perfect world. If trade-ins have become a problem now, its because the published caused the proportion to increase.

If budgets for games are getting so high they require no trade-ins, then make more games with smaller budgets than a few huge games with massive ones.

Trade ins are becoming more of an issue because to most gamers that is now the way to get games. Back in my day (yeah, the 80’s), there was moderate piracy, but to get the new stuff, someone had to buy it. Then the 90’s was more about everyone buying it due to no internet… The 00’s was where piracy took off, but also where games shops started doing trade ins. However, now some players only buy 2nd hand, they never buy new and tbh, it’s the obvious thing to do, after all games are cheaper. It’s the same with downloading films/music etc, some kids growing up today have never bought anything and downloading stuff is a way of life, it’ll get worse before it gets better. For people buying stuff before these new ways appeared, they a second hand game here or there but won’t see the huge turnover which is why every shop in England does it these days, and evil places like GAME push it over new.

You sort of answered your own question – the issue is that budgets are getting out of control. None of the “big players” can afford to make a niche game that only sells a million or so copies anymore. Most of the major problems with modern gaming have this issue at their core (erosion of consumer rights, dumbing down and simplification of gameplay for accessibility, overproliferation of DLC, yearly releases and excessive milking of franchises, etc.). The traditional methods of monetization (i.e. selling games like they did in the 90’s) are no longer profitable at a $50-$60 price point, but the studios know that the market won’t accept another price point increase, so they have to get fancy with monetization.

Does anybody remember the time most home PCs didn’t have Internet connection and the said connection was more of a weird thing? And look where we are now. So, apparently, the future is with the Internet, and sooner or later people will have to deal with it.

The key phrase being “the future”. Always-online at the minute is merely problem after problem. If it’s not people’s ISPs fucking up (that’s assuming you don’t live in one of the ‘dead zones’ in the UK or US, or a place with strict data-caps like Canada or Australia) it’s the publisher’s servers.

“Co-Op is super fun! Its not a must!” – I always worry this just means “We can’t figure out how to do either properly, so we hope you somehow muddle through both without realizing we can’t bring a game to a point well.”

A can-but-not-must co-op game very often falls flat on its face if its “really co-op for 4, but only one guy currently playing”, whereas a well made singleplayer game can work okay for co-op as well..but its tricky.

Basically what I am, as always, worried about, is that by trying to keep both in mind, they muddle SP.

After being burnt by Diablo 3 (I caved in and bought it) due to a never-ending queue of problems (disconnects making me lose progress and loot, lag spikes in every session since I got the game [and dieing due to this lag], misc. error messages closing my connection to their servers) I am NEVER buying a game I intend to play single-player with always-online DRM again. Never, ever.

So Epic come crying back to the PC with their new game and engine (cause they want to show it off and the current console hardwarecan’t run it properly, despite them banging on about how its scalable graphically)

Then they say they are considing always online with the same line (“that it’d be used first and foremost to improve the game”) that has been used every single time and proved to be bollocks each and every time as well?

lets be honest they would be better off telling us that they are conisdering beating puppies with sticks than telling a pc gaming comunity they are considering always online, would turn less people against the idea of the game.

This is one of the worst thing about this always on DRM. Not only is it DRM. Not only does it require constant connection… but the companies selling/developing these games have to insult the fans by telling us lies or dodging the truth like we’re ignorant children.

I think this announcement is a sort of toe in the water… see how the internet reacts if we say, “maybe it will have always on DRM.”

Everyone and their dog bought Diablo3 even though the game ended up being less than good. This alone has sent a signal to all developers that it’s ok to do online-always DRM because Blizzard did it and got away with it.

This now is the result of the massive Diablo3 sales and everyone saying “yes” to always-online DRM with their money. Expect more and more of this because, quite frankly, everyone had a chance to say no to this kind of DRM and yet everyone went and bought a game by the millions with this kind of DRM.

The message was still sent, and that is that PC Gamers will give money gladly for an always online DRM. That’s the only thing developers and publishers care, PC gamers gave their money in droves and affirmed the D3 DRM. As such this is just the beginning of the consequences for the millions of sales of D3. SC5 is doing it as well. Expect things now to get way worse because PC gamers didn’t have the courage to say no to the newest shiny thing.

This is not accurate, the massive initial sales for Diablo 3 were down to the sheer strength of the brand and the expectation from fans of what has been a huge PC franchise, one of the most popular ever. Developers and publishers would be foolish to relate the success of Diablo 3 with it’s online component, which has been roundly detested by most of the gaming public and gaming media. That’s not to say that having a game always online is a bad thing in and off itself, it just depends, it’s case sensitive. Epic don’t really have a massive franchise with millions of established fans for this new game of theirs, this decision could make or break the game. I don’t think they’ll enter into it lightly.

Correct me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t ‘Left 4 Dead 2’ designed primarily around it’s co-operative play and yet it still includes a single-player component (no matter how dull) that is fully playable offline (as long as Steam’s offline mode works, that is)?

“Single-player’s absolutely gonna be super fun…”

“…Fortnite is – above all else – being designed with multiplayer at the forefront, so whatever goes with that territory is fair game.”

Then why even include single-player? WHY? The only reason I can muster up is that Epic is hanging it’s cherries hoping that a few million poor schmucks will buy the game off of Steam noticing the ‘Single-Player’ tag on the lower right corner not realizing that the game was “designed with multiplayer at the forefront” and requires a constant internet connection to be played! BUYER BEWARE! TOUGH LUCK! SEE YOU IN COURT MATE, ‘CUZ WE HAVE A TEAM OF LEGAL EAGLES WAITING TO FLIP IT INTO A COUNTER SUIT FOR WASTING OUR TIME!!!

@ Everyone saying the answer to this is pirating the game, DO NO PIRATE IT. What we need to send these crooks is the message that we are not interested on their products anymore, if we pirate it it will justify them on their schemes and if it fails to sell well they will blame it on piracy, not their stupidity.

Act like grown ups and turn away completely from these products/companies.